Dear God, I want to unread that.

If you’re having a good day and want it to stay that way, click away from here. BUT if you want to know that some North Koreans sliced, diced and ground up Chinese babies to sell in capsule form as cure-alls, read on.

Since August, South Korea has confiscated 17,500 capsules containing the powdered flesh of dead babies, which smugglers had tried to bring into the country from China, officials say.

Why would anyone want powdered baby flesh?
The capsules are “thought by some to cure disease and boost stamina,” says the BBC. However, nothing could be further from the truth. South Korean officials say that the capsules contain “super bacteria” that are harmful to humans, and that the crackdown is necessary to protect the South Korean public from a health hazard.

Where do the capsules come from?
The capsules seized by South Korea “were made in northeastern China from babies whose bodies were chopped into small pieces and dried on stoves before being turned into powder,” says Kim. The manufacturers are reportedly ethnic Koreans in northeastern China, near the border with North Korea. It’s thought that they obtained the remains from hospitals and abortion clinics, using both dead infants and fetuses.

Has anyone been prosecuted?
No. The smugglers say they were tricked into believing the capsules were “ordinary” stamina enhancers.

Read the entire article at The Week.

Real U-3 Unemployment Rate: 11.6%
 

Propaganda unemployment rate: 8.1%; Real unemployment rate: 11.6%.
Reason for difference: organic growth of labor force which grows alongside the broader population. Don’t be confused by cheap explanations on TV why the labor force should be declining (especially with ZIRP meaning pre-retirement workers have to stay in the labor force ever longer to supplant their meager fixed income): the widely accepted definition of the labor pool, that used by the CBO and all other government forecasting agencies, assumes a 90,000 growth in the labor force every month as it has to keep in line with the growth of the US population! The implication is simple: using a real labor force participation rate long-term average of 65.8%, the real unemployment rate in April was 11.6%, based on the 5.4 million additional workers that should be counted as part of the U-3 which then means that the real number of unemployed is not 12.5 million but 17.9 million, which in turn implies a 11.6% unemployment rate in the US. This also means that the spread between the propaganda, and the real number is now 3.5%: the most it has been since the early 1980s.

You know what they say about assuming…

Julia’s Circle of Life by Iowahawk is a must see.
 

A tiny bit from the first panel:

The lunar ball was large last night. And luminescent.

Obama assembling de facto propaganda ministry

The U.S. State Department is planning to “buy” media broadcasts, as the Obama administration assembles a de facto propaganda machine, according to documents that reveal the president’s plans moving closer to the 2012 election.

According to information WND located via routine database research, State’s Bureau of Public Affairs is soliciting the help of “global news coverage service providers” to create and disseminate department “news.”

The selected contractor will provide “full-time, 24/7 service,” the Statement of Work for the plan said.

“The department seeks a service provider for full, turn-key news-style global television coverage of ad hoc open press events featuring the Secretary of State and other officials across the United States and throughout the world,” according to the SOW, “and to send this content back to the department’s Washington headquarters…”

Upon receiving these privately packaged productions, the department, in turn, “will distribute this video content to media organizations through an array of traditional and new media platforms.”

Indeed, just as the department is awaiting contractor bids on the project, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s representative at the World Press Freedom Day in Tunisia heaped accolades upon UNESCO for hosting the annual event.

The State Department plan is twofold: to hire a single contractor to provide television news crew services on the one hand, and to provide transmission/streaming services as a corollary service.

“The television news crew category is both one and two-person crews, and includes one and multi-camera productions,” the SOW pointed out. “The transmission category includes both traditional fiber, terrestrial and satellite-based as well as file-based and Internet delivery platforms.”

The use of such government- as well as industry-funded broadcasts, known as “video news releases,” or VNRs, has increasingly come under fire in the past decade.

VNRs “are segments designed to be indistinguishable from independently produced news reports that are distributed and promoted to television newsrooms,” according to Source Watch, a Center for Media and Democracy project that chronicles the intersecting of public relations and public policy.

Use of VNRs is illegal if not clearly identified as such. Last year the FCC fined a Fox affiliate $4,000 for airing a General Motors VNR during a newscast without clarification. But I’m sure Uncle Barack can get around that little technicality, especially if there’s one channel dedicated to their VNRs. As my friend said, “totally unbiased, of course, and certainly objective in it’s reporting of the government itself”.

Remember, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

‘Damn Straight’

Once again Joan at Primordial Slack has tunneled inside our psyches…

A snippet:

For the record, once again, let me say that I don’t ever need, much less want, to see a woman talking to me about men’s sports. Ever. As a woman I enjoy watching men being men, or even behaving like the boys they are at heart. Men at work. Men at play. Awesome and sexy. Don’t bring another woman into that fantasy, bee-yatch. I like to watch Mikey do dirty jobs because I just do. I like football and rugby because. Now go away, get outta my face and offa my television for at least one hour.

Truth, like a cool breeze on a hot summer day, always satisfies.

No disrespect meant to the human Harvey, but that’s what I named this guy. Pictures are for identification purposes, should he return. And now you’re thinking ‘Pam, you simply must get out more’.

First image may be embiggened, should you actually want to see a large photo of a disgusting bird.

Just a tad upset.

Harvey, straight on. Not his best side.

Tampa mayor Bob Buckthorn wrote to the governor, requesting firearms be banned at the RNC convention in August. The governor answered in the negative and for that we thank him.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has rejected a request to ban visitors from carrying concealed weapons in downtown Tampa during the Republican National Convention in August.

The request came from Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who wrote Scott to ask for an executive order to override state and federal laws allowing people with concealed weapons permits to carry firearms.

Buckhorn and others are concerned about people carrying guns at such a large, politically charged gathering.

In a same-day response to Buckhorn’s letter Tuesday, Scott, a Republican, said banning guns in the downtown area would infringe upon citizens’ constitutionally protected rights to legally arm themselves.

“Like you, I share the concerns that ‘violent anti-government protests or other civil unrest’ can pose dangers,” Scott wrote in his two-page response. “But it is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law.

Scott also said that his understanding is guns are already banned inside the convention center and in the surrounding “safety zone” created by the Secret Service.

Fox News

The man gets it. And for that we are grateful.